


And We Danced

by Eithe



Category: Seven Kingdoms: The Princess Problem (Visual Novel)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-24 07:40:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 8,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9711572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eithe/pseuds/Eithe
Summary: Lady Calanthia, finding her feet.(written for 7KPP Week 2017)





	1. Week Three, Sun-day

The third week of the Summit is traditionally dedicated to the Matchmaker’s whims. Calanthia has been preparing for that. So naturally, on the first day of what will surely be a week of trials, Calanthia wakes up with a familiar feeling that presages a truly horrific headache. She should know better than to make plans; it never serves her well.

Getting out of bed requires a heroic effort, but tradition must be observed, and her friends deserve gifts (allies deserve recognition; those of dubious alliance at least merit bribes).

And of course, the Matchmaker deserves respect and a healthy degree of wariness.

Calanthia would not put it past the old dragon to be plotting convoluted scenarios for the ruin of delegates she dislikes, largely for her own amusement (although of course there are also merits to seeing how people perform under stress). So far rumor bears out that prediction; it may only be Sun-day, but even in the listless fog of steadily-increasing discomfort, Calanthia hears of the Matchmaker spontaneously manifesting out of thin air to provoke tears with just a few cutting words.

It’s not even tea time yet.

She normally finds the woman’s caustic wit and clear commitment to remaining unimpressed a little amusing - if nothing else because she knows the same derisive sneer has probably been leveled on Lord Blain and Crown Prince Jarrod.

She can’t quite imagine it turned on Princess Gisette, but that is in part because Gisette is genuinely impressive, for all she is morally bankrupt and mildly terrifying.

Still less terrifying than the Matchmaker; Gisette has the power (and, if last week was any indication, occasionally the inclination) to have people killed, but while the prospect is frightening, death isn’t Calanthia’s worst-case scenario. The Matchmaker would never dream of killing her; the Matchmaker would leave her alive to suffer in disgrace after completely blighting all of her prospects, and Calanthia knows all too well where that situation would leave her.

So yes; she is hiding.

Hiding in her room, like a child.

Surely that’s excusable, at this juncture. She’s done a deal of work today; gifts have been purchased and wrapped, the accompanying notes written. She even got a bit of studying in, if asking Ria for tips on how to style her hair more fashionably counts (having her hair brushed is so relaxing, and such a comforting and nostalgic feeling, that it even helped with the headache, a bit).

Then, of course, there was that distasteful scene with Sir Harold and Jasper’s… it was not shouting, because he would never be so uncouth as to shout, but Sayra rather undersold it when she promised an ‘intense lecture.’ After that, the pain blossomed out until she could feel her pulse throbbing in her temples and direct sunlight felt like being stabbed in the eye with a shard of ice. She’s worked through worse - has needed to work through worse. Half of her campaigning for the Summit was done on a broken leg.

But there’s really no need to do such a thing today.

All she wants to do is stay in her room with a cup of tea and all the curtains drawn until it’s late enough that falling into bed won’t be entirely disgraceful. The roaming threat outside her door, on top of everything else, makes this seem like a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

It’s not cowardice, she reasons; it’s choosing her battles. And also allowing herself a moment of peace before the Matchmaker’s inevitable attempt to trip her into ignominy.

When Jasper quietly clears his throat behind her, she isn’t even surprised; he always seems to be summoned when she thinks of him, or when she’s making excuses for being slothful.

She rolls her head around to look at him without stirring from where she’s situated on the chaise. She’s very nearly comfortable, for all her head is pounding, and she does not feel inclined to move.

He seems to be giving her a Look, as best she can see from the odd angle, so she tries to smile. His unimpressed face is nearly as intimidating as the Matchmaker’s.

Perhaps they’re related? It’s so hard to guess at consanguinity with the Natives; there’s an uncanny uniformity to their pale loveliness and jewel-bright eyes that baffles her usually-keen ability to see similarity of feature in families.

Jasper must be an only child, though; much too serious to have spent his early years being properly teased.

He clears his throat again and she brightens her smile to counteract the slight flush she can feel rising to her cheeks; it sometimes feels a bit like he can read her mind, and right now her thoughts are ridiculous nattering about his pretty eyes and how much he wants teasing.

“Hello, Jasper. Is there something I can do for you?”

He frowns a little, and she finds herself sitting up without entirely meaning to. He doesn’t seem to be frowning at her, however.

“I’m afraid I will be very busy tomorrow morning with arranging the dispersal and retrieval of gifts, so I won’t have a chance to give you this then.”

She realizes, for the first time, that he’s holding a small armful of - presents? They must be. She twists around a little more to get a better look.

Hang her headache, anyway.

“I wish you luck, Lady Calanthia - but I believe you have been working hard enough you won’t need any. I think, if I had gotten the chance to know you, I would have given you these even if you weren’t my assigned lady.  But I am glad you were. You have made me incredibly proud, Lady Calanthia.”

She’s not sure she’s ever heard him talk so much all at once, and pain is enough of a distraction that she doesn’t quite manage to keep the surprise off her face. There’s no point fighting the pink in her cheeks, now; she’d never quite thought to hear Jasper say he was proud of her.

“I know this week the Matchmaker will see what I have always seen in you.”

He looks nearly as surprised at himself for this show of undisguised kindness (fondness, even?) as she feels. It seems such an overt display has deeply offended his sensibilities, though, because after setting his several somethings down on the nearby end-table, he makes a rapid retreat. Almost hasty enough to be rude, and Jasper never lowers himself to rudeness.

A little like he’s running away from her, but more like he’s startled himself to the point of taking flight. Perhaps he didn’t expect to find her here at all, and thought to leave the gifts for her to find later?

Or perhaps he’d have thought better of the whole thing, if she hadn’t startled him. That would have been a very great shame.

Curiosity is enough to pull her off the couch to examine the little collection of parcels. They’re beautifully wrapped, all three of them; scented paper and bright ribbons, a little spray of flowers caught up in one of the bows.

She’s careful with the unwrapping, partly out of habit (paper you don’t tear is paper you can reuse, and ribbon can always find a new life somewhere) and partly because they’re so lovely it would be a crime to wantonly destroy the artistry.

The first contains a beautiful small journal with an embossed cover, and she traces over the floral patterns texturing the leather. She fancies it’s an encouragement to gather her thoughts and keep them for herself, or perhaps share at some much later date when they’ve ceased to be relevant or embarrassing, which is the sort of conscientiousness she’s coming to expect from Jasper when he’s not impelling her to improve with the force of his mild disapproval.

The next, a little box, cradles a new pair of dancing slippers, much finer than her own old pair; Baron Elias was not much for dancing, and never encouraged his wife’s fondness for it. She remembers how she loved dancing with her sisters, though, when she was younger. She hasn’t practiced in years, and is no doubt woefully behind the times on partnered dances, but it brought her so much joy, once…

She strokes a finger over the embroidery and smiles. Maybe she’ll ask Jasper for lessons; he’s the most graceful person she’s ever seen. He surely knows how to dance.

The last little package, slighter and flatter than the other two, contains a small framed poem about facing challenges with a beautiful dried flower inside. She’s not an expert like Earl Emmett or Princess Penelope, but the pressed blossom looks alien in the way of something that isn’t quite kin to anything she knows, rather than in the way of a stranger from a familiar family.

Reading the poem, she finds herself smiling and realizes that her headache has abated considerably; the words don’t swim nauseatingly in front of her eyes, and her head merely throbs.

She almost feels grateful for the Matchmaker, and for the headache; if it hadn’t been for those oppressive forces, she wouldn’t have sought sanctuary in her room and wouldn’t have had the leisure to fully enjoy this lovely surprise.

She decides to test her luck and crack the curtains by her desk. When her head doesn’t bid fair to implode, she opens to the first page of her journal and makes a neat sketch of the poem and the slippers. She gives a brief but faithful accounting of her day, with only a little license taken in the confrontation with Sir Harold; Duke Lyon may be right about the usefulness of unbiased accounts, after all, and there’s rarely any certain way to tell who will be the most important players in history while you’re living it.

Unless they’re of Princess Katyia’s caliber, anyway.

And then, because it’s now well into the afternoon and her neck has joined her head in protesting, and because she is an adult and a Lady and can do as she likes, she goes to bed. The headache will be gone in the morning, and all the nice things will still be there.

So will the Matchmaker, but she finds that she doesn’t mind that threat so very much, anymore.

 


	2. Week Three, Star-day

Jasper returns from his meeting with Mrs. White to find Calanthia clearly unchaperoned, but more or less where he told her to wait. His face is tight with tension, but she fancies that the annoyance at finding her alone is an improvement over whatever he would feel if he knew that Grand Duke Woodly had locked her in a parlor and then propositioned her.

In spite of his forbearance with her accidentally-acquired swains so far, she does not think Jasper would receive that intelligence with equanimity.

She’d expected some sort of offer today, after the Matchmaker told her she’d acquired enough interest that it was dangerous rather than useful, but this… gauntlet was still something of a surprise. At least Ria is too sweet and unpresumptuous to make an issue of it; Calanthia has no such illusions about the Crown Prince, or the Princess, and she’s not sure about the Grand Duke.

Woodly may very well be entirely pleasant about being rebuffed, just to confound her. That would still leave the royals, but they have at least not had decades to concoct ways to destroy their enemies. As adept as she is at it, even Gisette surely did not begin plotting in her cradle.

Calanthia knows she makes a lot of trouble for herself by thinking flirting is only ever a game. Just because it has never touched HER heart does not mean others are similarly unmoved. She keeps a pleasant expression fixed on her face, and Jasper has mastered himself before he's halfway down the hall.

Jasper doesn’t say anything, when he comes by her, but turns in a way that feels like a lead in a dance, draws her alongside him without a word or a gesture. She realizes that she’s standing a hair too close in the same moment that she realizes she does not particularly care. The distance feels comfortable. She doesn’t shift away.

Neither does he, which is more of a surprise.

“We are almost certain to be late now so let us lose no more time.”

She sighs and murmurs,

“If you spy anyone else lying in wait, warn me and I’ll pretend to swoon. You can say you’re taking me outside for some fresh air.”

He huffs out a laugh and she feels a little spark of triumph kindle behind her sternum. She lets herself smile.

“No one would believe you’d fallen into a swoon, my lady.”

Truly? That’s more credit than she’d give herself.

Then they are outside the Matchmaker’s door, at last. She starts to move forward, but Jasper doesn’t, and that’s enough to check her steps.

He’s silent, giving her a serious, searching look - one she finds herself returning with increasing concern as he fails to speak.

When he seems likely to keep his silence indefinitely, she prompts him,

“What’s wrong, Jasper? It’s not like you to be at a loss for words.”

“I’m… debating whether it is my place to say anything or not.”

She wants to laugh at that, that he should worry about such a thing. He may scrupulously observe protocol and etiquette, but the Isle clearly has its own hierarchy, something that is in effect during the years-long period between Summits. Jasper may be serving as her butler for the time being, but given the way he is applied to for guidance or assistance by those who live here, it seems a little absurd that he could consider something above him.

Unless that’s not what he means at all?

Well, for now, she wants to hear what he has to say.

“I was wondering if I should ask your advice, actually, before the crown prince accosted us. If you have any to offer, I would welcome it.”

“It is not advice, exactly. Well… I suppose it is.”

Something about that is bothering him. Why? She keeps the frown off her face, but does study him more closely as he continues,

“I know you must be under a lot of pressure to form an alliance, whether it be one of the heart or otherwise. But… remember that you are free to choose no one.”

She startles a little and knows she’s gone wide-eyed and round-mouthed like a child. That’s… an option?

“Or more accurately, you are free to choose yourself.”

It feels like having the wind knocked out of her. The words rock through her like an explosion, hit something deep and buried and load-bearing, and she feels tears spring to her eyes. He only fails to notice immediately because he isn’t quite looking at her, now; she scrambles for control.

Damned if she’s going to cry _before_ a meeting with the Matchmaker, when she’s never been reduced to tears _during_ one.

“If that is your choice, know that I will support you, even if you fear your family or your nation will not.”

Her voice is hoarse but even when she says,

“Thank you, Jasper.”

She isn’t sure she’s ever meant those words quite this much, and is a little embarrassed by the feeling in them. But this is a gift, entirely unlooked-for. She thought returning from the Summit unmarried a sign of failure, but of course it is also a choice. One she hadn’t considered. And this…

Sudden, comforting surety settles over her; this is what she wants. To focus on doing good, not on marrying well. To follow in Katyia’s footsteps in this, too.

He makes the same face he did when he gave her his gifts at the start of the week; as if his own sweet affability is a perplexing new development and it offends him on a basic level.

“I shouldn’t keep you any longer.”

He must see the shine in her eyes when he gives her a nod of encouragement, but the tears don’t fall, and she smiles. Her hands don’t shake on the door handle, and she walks in feeling certain of what she wants, rather than simply what she can bear, for the first time in days (in weeks, in months, in years).


	3. Week Four, Water-day

 

Calanthia has been going through her case notes for so long that her vision is blurring, no matter how firmly she tries to fix her eyes on the page in front of her, and she’s forgotten to wear gloves again. Ah, well, it’s no matter if her fingers are unbecomingly ink-stained, this week; being segregated from the rest of the delegates is good for that, at least. Her appearance need not be a primary concern right now. **  
**

She’ll still need to dress her hair for dinner, but she can probably talk Ria into doing something with it that doesn’t necessitate leaving the desk.

Trials are not won by being pretty and presentable. She will win by being right, and by fighting harder, and by doing the work. She thinks she almost has it; she may not know what the murder weapon was, but she knows what it was not - and it assuredly was not poison in poor Lord Adalric’s tea.

She can get an acquittal with what she has.

That’s not good enough, though.

She needs to do better than win; she needs to obliterate every possible doubt, or the suspicion will linger and that poor child Imogen will suffer for it.

Also, it really won’t do for Gisette to get the idea that she can arrange assassinations with impunity here at the Summit. Given the warning letter Adalric slipped to her in the second week, it’s fairly clear what quarter his own ill-fortune likely originated from.

Calanthia may not be able to stop Gisette directly, but if she figures out exactly what happened, she can hint to the princess that she’s being unbecomingly obvious about it and hope that takes care of the problem. It may also get Calanthia quietly disposed of when the Summit is over and she returns to Namaire, but given that two people have died, Calanthia herself narrowly escaped dying, and Imogen is currently on trial for her life (and they’ve only been here four weeks), it also seems like it may be necessary if she wants to avert a war.

Although… there’s a thread she can begin tugging on tomorrow; the other murder.

Calanthia tries to make her eyes focus on the words she’s been writing, and can’t. She closes them and sighs, trying to knuckle the exhaustion away.

When she opens her eyes again, a steaming cup of tea has materialized in front of her, with a flower floating on the surface.

She blinks slowly at it.

She hadn’t thought she was quite that tired; hallucinations are usually the province of her second or third wakeful day, and she’s been quite careful not to compromise herself to that extent. She needs to be at her best for this.

Then a familiar hand enters her field of view to settle the pot near her elbow, and she looks up to find Jasper right behind her. Somehow, it’s not remotely startling to see him there, and that’s the most surprising thing of all; she’s never been so comfortable with another person that she didn’t even notice them getting this close to her, before. Growing up with as many siblings as she has necessitated extreme vigilance to avoid pranks, and no one outside of her siblings has ever seemed entirely trustworthy.

But Jasper… apparently the wary, animal part of her mind has decided he is above suspicion, if it’s willing to remain so peacefully quiescent when he’s so close…

His soothing murmur interrupts that train of thought.

“Lady Calanthia. Considering how busy you are this week, I thought you could use this. It is a special Isle recipe. It will help keep your energy up.”

She certainly could use it. But… she studies him, while he waits for her to take a sip. He looks as tired as she feels, and yet here he is, taking care of her.

She ventures,

“Won’t you join me? I always find it’s best to take tea in company.”

“You drink your tea alone most mornings,” he points out.

But he doesn’t say no and he doesn’t leave. If she can find the right words, he’ll stay; he wants to stay, or he’d have given her a direct, albeit polite, refusal.

And… she wants to take care of him, too - in return for all the care he’s taken with her, in part, but also simply because she doesn’t know if anyone else is allowed to do so.

“Well, I was trying to spare your delicate feelings,” she teases, “but if you will insist on bluntness; you look at least as tired as I feel. If this tea is as special as you say, you need it just as much as I do. I can’t have my butler collapsing on the job, now can I?”

She wonders if the affection behind the teasing is as embarrassingly obvious as it seems to her. Perhaps not; that doesn’t seem to be the language his family spoke amongst themselves.

He hesitates another moment, but accedes,

“…Very well.”

Her small dining table can easily accommodate tea for two. Jasper produces a teacup out of thin air by some sort of butlery sorcery while she’s transferring her own cup and the teapot, and they settle into their chairs.

Just looking up from her notes and moving across the room is doing her a world of good; she hadn’t realized how long she’d been hunched over the pages, but it must have been hours, and she hadn’t looked up in nearly that long. She lifts her cup again and contemplates the tea.

The fragrance wafting up from the cup is a curious combination of sweet and sour quite unlike anything she’s ever smelled - it’s not the most appetizing blend she’s been offered lately, but if it works, that scarcely matters. And it does work; after just a few sips, she can feel alertness returning, the lassitude that had weighed down her limbs dissipating. Her mind snaps into focus and the arguments she was trying to craft seem so much simpler.

Also, it no longer requires a supreme effort of will to get her eyes to focus.

Hurrah!

Jasper, too, takes the first few sips in silence. Well, that’s right and proper; as the hostess, it’s her duty to start the conversation.

As soon as she opens her mouth, though, Jasper tenses. She feels a momentary surge of guilt for her outburst at the beginning of the week; he has helped, as much as he can. She doesn’t know all of the rules he’s operating under, but she does know some - and he’s already bent them for her.

What Yvette said in that overheard conversation made it sound like he’s bent them to breaking, in fact, and she doesn’t want to be responsible for pushing him into a choice he’ll regret.

So she smiles like she doesn’t notice his tension and promises to limit the conversation to happy things -

“ - because it would hardly be a proper break, otherwise, now would it?”

He raises a brow and gives her a wan little sliver of a smile.

“And what would qualify?”

So few things, really. She has poisoned a great many of her own sources of joy in the pursuit of a degree of autonomy. But there are two people in this conversation, and surely more of his little happinesses survived to adulthood. So she keeps her expression open and friendly, easy because the feeling behind it is sincere, and says,

“You tell me. What things make you happy?”

She holds her tea still, waiting, and does not raise her cup to her lips again until he speaks.

“When I was young, I used to think the world had too much noise. Too much fighting and disagreements, even too much laughing and talking. It was all too loud. Sometimes… sometimes I wanted the quiet and the stillness. So I would borrow a book from the library and steal away.”

She can see some of the weight dropping off of his shoulders, the way he relaxes into a more natural posture as some of his tension unspools.

“There was a little grove on one side of the lake, where I could fit in the trunk of a giant gnarled tree. I would sit there and read in the quiet.”

She can imagine him younger and coltish, not yet grown into grace, not yet grown into carrying his own steady stillness with him; she wonders if that’s really what he was like.

Jasper meets her eyes again.

“That made me happy.”

That’s the past, though, she thinks; he is more than that boy, now. Still that boy, but grown. So:

“What makes you happy now?”

She finds that she would very much like to know; maybe it’s something she can arrange for more of, at least for the three-and-some remaining weeks of the Summit.

She can’t possibly pledge to be quieter without perjuring herself quite profoundly, but perhaps there are alternatives.

He gives her an unreadable look, one that goes on for long enough that he must be weighing whether or not to entrust her with an answer. When he does finally speak, though, all he says is,

“I should get going. I really am needed elsewhere.”

She turns real disappointment (and not a little petulance) into a playful pout.

“Sometimes I think all you do is run away from me, Jasper.”

Like last week, vanishing out of the room once he’d delivered his gifts. It’s all very perplexing; most people will at least stay to be thanked for their kindnesses.

“If I were running away from you, Lady Calanthia, I would do a better job of it.”

She laughs again at that.

“I shall endeavor not to give you cause - only promise me that if I am coming close, you’ll warn me first. I would miss you, if you began avoiding me in earnest.”

“I can always find the Matchmaker for you, if you are worried about being lonely.”

This time her laughter is a surprise even to her, unfeigned and artless delight; he’s teasing her back! She’s grinning outright when she says,

“Pray, don’t; I should hate to have to call upon Lord Clarmont’s offer to vanquish a dragon for me so soon. It’s not done, you know, to presume upon such an offer of chivalry mere weeks after it is extended.”

Jasper’s soft laughter echoes back to her and lingers long after he is gone. She wishes she could have seen him laughing; he so rarely even smiles.

But that’s a foolish fancy, and now is a time for ugly realities. She shakes her head and resettles herself at her desk, going over her assembled evidence again, looking for a connection she’s missed.

They both have work to do.

 


	4. Week Four, Fire-day and Star-day

Entire years can pass with nothing straining his oaths, but now everything is going wrong at once. He cannot try to right it without being forsworn and honorless, but if he upholds his oaths, he is doomed to watch while everything he cares about crumbles around him.

It is torture.

So he does what he can, as much as is allowed and a bit beyond that. He tries to protect Lady Calanthia, because she at least is free to act, and she is as fierce an advocate as Imogen could wish for. Fortune favors them in that, at least.

But he is not willing to leave her wellbeing up to chance when this much action, at least, he is allowed; he makes sure her food passes through his hands as often as he can manage, because if one cup of tainted tea could pass through the kitchens, then greater vigilance needs to be exercised.

Everything is going wrong, but he will not allow this to go wrong; she will have a chance to keep fighting.

But Calanthia also knows enough to understand some of what is wearing on him, so when she asks him to talk to her, the words come spilling out in a rush.

He does feel a bit better, after. She wasn’t wrong about that; it’s quieter in his head, now that he’s spoken the words. She reaches out, settles one hand lightly on his arm.

“You don’t have to act,” she tells him, absolute conviction in her voice. “I will.”

There’s steel in her spine, but her eyes are inexpressibly soft.

“I don’t know if I can salvage the Summit. But I can save Imogen. I can, and I will.” She looks at her desk, where her notes are gathered rather haphazardly into stacks, and then back at him. There are shadows under her eyes even though she’s fresh from bed, but her gaze doesn’t waver when she adds,

“I promise.”

“Lady Calanthia.” A reminder of who she is, of who he is allowed to be. Of the distance that protocol and propriety require.

She tilts her head in a curious, birdlike gesture, waiting. He tells her,

“Thank you.”

She smiles, soft-edged and impossibly weary.

“Thank me when I win.”

“I can offer my appreciation more than once, my lady; I find I have an abundance.”

She squeezes his arm again before her hand finally falls away, and it’s only then - with the sudden coolness in the departure of her warmth - that he realizes how long she’d kept it there.

–

She does win, is the wonder of it. More than wins; she is incandescent. They’ve all seen sparks of it, but she’s been careful to tamp down this brightness, to hide it. In the first three weeks she leaned, nudged, insinuated, made quiet suggestions.

This week, she has no patience for such subtlety.

She stood up in the dining room and restored peace without ever raising her voice, and that was apparently nothing but a preview of what she would do at the trial. He believed in her, not without cause, and this evening she shames any who might have doubted her.

She tears apart the evidence against Imogen, little as it is, with a compelling combination of emotional appeals and logic that would surely be enough to secure an acquittal with no further effort on her part. Then she quite clearly states that there is no legal basis for the trial to even be taking place, staring challengingly at the other delegates and even - especially - Head Butler Jorges.

She waits with patiently folded hands while Lady Avalie presents her closing arguments, eyes narrowed - her opponent is barely going through the motions, which means she has already won, but when she rises, she demands the attention of the room once more.

Seizes it.

Holds it.

She’s found out precisely what happened. She lays it out, clear and concise and utterly irrefutable.

And then it’s over - a unanimous acquittal - and he sees her finally bowing under the weight. Not the weight of the trial, of an innocent woman’s life. The weight of what comes after; of the people who want to bask in the light she’s throwing off. She has exhausted herself already. She has nothing more to give them, tonight.

He slides in beside her and she lists against his shoulder, and that impropriety more than anything else tells him how much of herself she’s spent on this. She is not particularly dedicated to etiquette for its own sake, but she is careful in when how she breaks with it; this is not measured, not careful. This is pure exhaustion. She worked herself to the bone for this victory.

He shepherds her away from her admirers, and for once she is entirely quiet. He looks down and sees her eyes closed. She looks for all the world like she’s sleeping, nestled against his shoulder, even though they’re walking at very nearly her usual speed.

“I did not know that you had the ability to sleep while walking. It is an unusual talent.”

She makes a noise of protest and gives him a reproving look through her lashes.

“I wasn’t sleeping. I was resting.” She yawns, distorting her words, and ducks to hide it against her hand. “Temporarily.”

He finds himself smiling down at her. She blinks slowly, like a cat, sleepy and unguarded.

He thanks her again because he can’t not, and in response she grins up at him - the open, unpolished expression she almost never allows onto her face, that shows where she’ll someday have crow’s feet and reveals that she has dimples.

“For what?”

Teasing. Half-asleep on his shoulder, burned down to a ember, and she still wants to laugh. He tells her honestly,

“For today. For this week. For everything.”

For so much. For being something that makes him happy. For being the kind of person who wants to try.

She pinks up a little and her eyes drop to the floor.

“I made you a promise,” she says. “But… you’re welcome. For everything.”

She’s outright swaying on her feet by the time she extracts a reciprocal promise that he will get some rest of his own. She’s holding her eyes wide enough that she looks a little crazed, between the expression and the way her hair is starting to escape its confines to tumble wildly where it will. He wants to reach up and tuck an errant strand behind her ear and catches the impulse before his hand has more than twitched, but -

He bids her goodnight and removes himself, flexing his traitorous hand. This is not permitted.

At least he didn’t touch her, this time -

Except he did. She was pressed against his side for the entire walk back to her room. He put an arm around her in front of all the assembled delegates. That, he could excuse as necessary, and maybe it was, but given… everything else, it was wildly inappropriate.

She is a delegate.

None of this is permitted.


	5. Future Summit, Sun-day

Calanthia watches the delegates disembarking from the ship - they seem horrifyingly young, most of them, for all she remembers being certain of her own maturity when she first set foot on this Isle. She has a decade on the youngest, now, though, she supposes, and the intervening seven years have been… if not kind, at least less fraught than those that saw her own cohort grow to adulthood. Avalie is the last to alight, of course, keeping a watchful eye on the gaggle of Jiyelians, and has not a hair out of place in spite of the long voyage.

Perhaps the wind and sea don’t dare displease her; it would really not be that much of a surprise.

Calanthia gives her friend (and sometimes-rival, and long-standing ally) a beaming smile and dips into a curtsey.

“Minister Avalie, a pleasure to see you again.”

“Lady Calanthia. You’re looking well.”

Avalie’s smile is pleased and inscrutable; it doesn’t sound like much, probably, to anyone who doesn’t know them, but they both know Calanthia tends to wear it outwardly when things in the seven kingdoms are not working out as they ought; having the friendship of so many powerful people after their Summit meant having the influence to keep putting things right even after the treaties were signed, and she’s seldom been able to resist exercising power, when she has it.

And trying to avoid being implicated, of course; Avalie may be willing to occasionally take public credit for her triumphs, but Calanthia has found it so much easier to fob off her parents with excuses if they believe her circumstances materially unchanged from when she was first widowed. Their disappointment has been quite easy to bear, now that she spends so much of her life not merely miles but whole continents away from them.

A slightly more sincere smile flashes briefly across Avalie’s face and she adds,

“And happy, too. Being on the Isle seems to agree with you.”

Calanthia twists her fan in a gentle rebuke for this allusion, however oblique, to her personal afairs, but merely smiles agreeably and says,

“It is always pleasant to see good friends.”

“I do thank you for your kindness in not calling me an _old_ friend.”

Avalie looks as though she has aged perhaps two years in the last seven. Calanthia rather suspects that Avalie will carry right on looking ethereally lovely until she is dead, because going silver will merely lend her gravitas.

“My dear,” Calanthia mock-chides, “you will never be an old friend; I will always be two years your senior and I shall certainly not admit to being old myself until the next Summit, at the very earliest.”

Avalie lets her smile shade a little more sincere, before her eyes flick over Calanthia’s shoulder and she curtseys neatly.

“We shall have to catch up, later.”

That was directed at both of them; Calanthia still never hears him approaching unless he wants her to, but she doesn’t have to turn to know Jasper has come up at her shoulder. She can feel the shape of the extra space which propriety requires and which they wouldn’t normally leave between, defined by absent warmth.

“Minister Avalie,” Jasper says, “I’m afraid one of your…” the barely-perceptible pause is just enough to make it known that he is opting NOT to use the first few epithets that come to mind “…charges needs to be taken in hand.”

“Oh, is Prince Ralin affronting the Arlish delegation already? His aunt has lost a wager, I fear; she thought her warnings would hold at least through to the welcome feast, and here it’s been less than an hour.”

Avalie smiles in a way that says the wager wasn’t for money and she fully intends to collect at the next available opportunity.

Calanthia turns and finds Jasper a shade closer than he ought to be, but the Jiyelians have been shepherded into the castle by now, and Avalie already knows. If there’s anyone else around, well, she did delight in unraveling a few mysteries during her own Summit. She doesn’t mind providing one for the next generation.

She doesn’t kiss him, but she does let her eyes drop to his mouth before she meets his gaze again, and knows her grin has gone entirely impish in the meantime.

He tries to look stern and disapproving, but she can see the way his eyes are curling around the smile he won’t show; he wants to laugh.

“My life would be so much easier if you were not so much… yourself.”

She nods, mock-solemn.

“Quieter. More peaceful. Your silent sojourns would not be interrupted. You might be lonely, though.”

He does smile, now. Reaches up to tuck an errant strand of hair behind her ear and says, softly,

“We should go.”

They turn to walk back up to the castle, side by side, and she couldn’t stop grinning if her life depended on it.

On the surface, it’s not anything much. But she loves that word. She lives for that word.

‘We.’

 

 


	6. Week One, Moon-day

A happy moment? 

He doesn’t ask for much, Calanthia thinks wryly, taking a sip of her tea to buy herself a moment and to give Lord Clarmont the option of politely ignoring her small satirical smile. Maybe it truly wouldn’t be ‘much’ for anyone else, anyone from a country that didn’t devour its young. For anyone from a family that didn’t view their progeny as an investment or a resource, every bit as much as the sheep. Clarmont cannot help but know the first, and has certainly inferred the latter; she wonders, a little, why he asked.

That will come clear in time, no doubt. She does have one moment of uncomplicated joy that springs readily to mind - and moreover, one it costs her nothing to offer up over tea. This one moment of long-ago happiness isn’t a vulnerability to be exploited, even if he were the type to take advantage… and she’s fairly sure her initial assessment was correct, and he is not.

She studies Clarmont over the rim of her teacup and thinks,

Very well.

She settles her cup neatly in its saucer before she begins,

“It was cold that winter; bitterly cold. My parents were making a halfhearted effort at frugality that year, by which I mean ‘not lighting most of the fireplaces even when the water in the troughs was freezing almost a hand-span thick every night.’ My siblings spent a lot of time in the kitchen by the stove, since it was kept going at all hours. It was the only place in the house we always knew for sure would be warm. On this particular afternoon, though, Emmaline and Portia and I were in the library, huddled together under a quilt while we told each other stories - our parents had sold off most of the books by then. In a lull, it dawned on all of us how quiet it was. It was a blanketing silence, the kind that has a physical presence, the kind you hesitate to break. Em crept to the window, then ran back and grabbed Portia and me by the hands and towed us over, too, still in total silence. None of us spoke, but we watched with a kind of wonder as white flakes came falling down; snow. The first snow any of us had ever seen. We could hear it, there at the window, hissing and hushing and whispering to itself. It took several minutes to realize that we could go out and feel it, not just see and hear. Portia categorically refused to set foot out of doors, but Em and I stuffed our bare feet into worn boots and bundled each other in every single one of the scarves left by the door and whichever pair of gloves nearly fit, then ran right out into it. The powder crunched underfoot and we took those first few steps like newborn lambs, clumsy in our uncertainty, and then turned up our faces to the silver winter sky and tried to catch the flakes on our tongues…

“We laughed and danced until the snow underfoot was churned into mud and our toes burned from the cold. I don’t think either of us cared about the scolding we got for coming in soggy and tracking in dirt and damp.” 

She remembers Emmaline grinning up at her, pink-cheeked from cold and delight both, and feels a little tug of homesickness. She doesn’t miss the ancestral pile or her parents - has felt nothing but relief to be well away from both - but someday she would like to have the power to see to it that her sisters look that happy for more than an hour at a time.

“Thank you,” Clarmont says, and she blinks back into the warm, candle-lit room with a bit of surprise. It’s funny, the power good memories have. So many of the bad ones are gray and drawn and distant. He continues,

“I remember that winter, but my memories of it are not so kind. I think… I think I feel better knowing that they were a good time for someone.”

Calanthia studies him and notes the strain around his eyes. He does understand, after all.

Revaire eats her young, these days - or tries.

And now they’re here, two who escaped her teeth and claws, with a lever and a fulcrum set at the foot of the world. They can change that. 

She smiles again, and there’s nothing sharp or sardonic about it this time, although it is absolutely a baited trap.

She won’t be asking much, either. He wanted a happy memory. She wants to change the world, and he understands why they must.


	7. Childhood

 

Her parents call her Callie and she hates it and shies away from the proprietary, patronizing hands that try to pat her on the head. She ignores them when they tell her to be good, be still, be quiet.

Then she learns to read and discovers, very quickly, that she can use ‘still and quiet’ to convince them to leave her alone in the library; to the minds of the adults, the ‘still and quiet’ of reading seems to be equivalent to being good, to being still and quiet because she has been told to be instead of because she chooses to be.

Tutors come and go, depending on a number of different factors (but mostly whether or not they have the funds); unlike human teachers, the books are always there. Just like people, they have stories and secrets to tell her; a thousand things her parents would never dream of telling her, and some that they’d probably prefer she didn’t know.

Calanthia wants to know everything.

Spending time in the library earns her praise for being ‘good,’ for being still and quiet. Spending time in the library wins her information they don’t expect her to have.

It feels positively subversive.

She likes that word. ‘Subversive.’ It makes her feel sly and sneaky, although she is fairly sure she is actually neither of these things. That’s okay; she’s eight. There’s time to improve. It will be whole centuries before anyone expects cunning from her, and in the meantime she gets to practice sneaking out on market day and talking her way (or, more often, Abigail or Gregory’s way) out of trouble.

So she is still and quiet, after a fashion. The library becomes her sanctuary, but libraries are not inherently still and quiet any more than little girls are; both are full of words and stories and truths, and both are eager to spill them out.

Her sisters know this.

“Anthy,” they cry, voices tumbling over each other like overexcited puppies in much the same way they come scrambling into the room together, “tell us a story.”

Emmaline tucks herself in against Calanthia’s side and Portia folds onto the rug and leans against her legs. Abigail curls into the big chair and looks at her with big, hopeful eyes.

She doesn’t read out loud, most days; when the words go from eyes to mouth they don’t seem to stop at her brain. She only half-understands what she’s reading, if she reads out loud and quick, and it’s no fun for any of them if it’s slow.

So she speaks, instead; stitches together bits of history and fable into patchwork tales about girls who are strong and brave and smart, quick-witted and clever-tongued (and maybe, now and again, just a little light-fingered). They’re all at least half true, even if she does embellish, now and again, with dragons.

Reality has a sad lack of dragons.

She tells her sisters about what was and what might have been, what is and what ought to be. She tells them what all of them will do, when they are at court speaking words of power, when they are the ones writing stories and shaping history.

They aren’t an important family - she knows this, has had it made clear from the way Mama talks about what other ladies have and she does not, from the infrequency of their occasional and temporary tutors - but stories have taught her that blood matters much less if you are clever and stubborn and lucky and kind.

Calanthia intends to be all of these things.

She wants to be the kind of person stories are written about; someone good, who sets right what’s wrong. She only half-understands what the world’s wrongs are, but she wants to learn that, too, the way she’s learning history and myth and mathematics.

For now, what she has the power to do is make sure her sisters know that they are secretly princesses, and that they can change the world. Can save it -

“- like Princess Katyia.”

Calanthia loves the Princess, loves her story.

She wants to be just like her.

The year she turns nine, Papa shouts at her for saying so, and Mama tells her very sharply never to speak that name again.

**Author's Note:**

> This is pretty much all the fic I've considered fit to post, but there's more 7KPP doodling [over on my tumblr. ](http://teaandinanity.tumblr.com/tagged/7kpp)


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